Friday, March 29, 2013

Astig Beef Jerky is a newer beef jerky brand founded in August 2012 by Michael J Robin based out of Thousand Oaks, CA.

Making the claim that it's the first beef jerky company made with traditional Filipino recipes sold in the United States, Astig Beef Jerky is made with USDA approved grain fed beef. The name "Astig" is a Tagalog word meaning "cool", "badass" or "kickass".

This Adobo variety is the company's flagship flavor, based on a traditional and popular flavor from the Philippines.

Ingredients

Beef, cane vinegar, soy sauce, white sugar, garlic, pepper, bayleaf.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a light vinegar, light sweet, and a moderate black pepper flavor. The garlic starts out low but quickly gains strength.

The chewing brings in a bit more sweet along with a noticeable natural meat flavor. The black pepper picks up more.

For being sold as an "Adobo" flavored beef jerky, it seems to hold up well. Adobo, as I understand it, is a marinade of vinegar and garlic, and I do indeed get a fair amount of that flavor from the surface. Not being an Adobo expert, I can't vouch on how close this comes to true Filipino authenticity, but nonetheless, it does hold up to the general concept.

Otherwise, the flavors that define this jerky primarily is the sweetness and black pepper. The vinegar and garlic are noticeable, but generally are not as distinct. The natural meat flavors and a subtle touch of the soy sauce rounds out weaker flavors.

The vinegar and garlic tends to create a nice little tanginess in the chewing, and when combined with the sweet and black pepper, generates a lot of eye-popping flavor.

The copious amounts of black pepper creates a fair amount of spiciness. On my personal heat scale, I'd rate the burn as "medium" (level 3 out of 5).

The level of saltiness in this seems low to moderate.

Meat Consistency

These appear to be slices of whole meat, sliced into strips of various lengths, and sliced medium thickness.

This is a slightly moist jerky with a semi-moist surface feel. Biting off pieces require a little bit of twisting and gnawing to get through the stringiness. Chewing seems easy.

The chewing texture starts out feeling a little mushy, with a little bit initial chewing resistance. It has somewhat of meaty feel, though not steak like. Overall, it tends to feel mushy.

I don't see any visible pieces of a fat or gristle, however the chewing reveals a lot of stringiness, much of which tends to ball up into unchewable wads of tissue.

In terms of clean eating, my fingers don't pick up much stickiness, but they do pick up some bits of black pepper, and biting off pieces tends to throw black pepper bits across my desk.

Snack Value

Astig Jerky sells this Adobo variety from its website at a price of $36.00 for a six-pack of 3oz each. With shipping of $3.00 to Southern California, that works out to a price of $2.17 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $2.17 per ounce price, it's a good value. I'm getting a lot of good snackability from a great overall flavor, decent meat consistency, and fair chewing texture. Compared to other brands, it tends to offer better flavor, though similar meat consistency and chewing, for a similar price.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This Adobo Beef Jerky from Astig Jerky packs in a eye-opening flavor combination of vinegar, black pepper, sweet, and garlic, creating a nice tanginess in the chewing and producing a moderate level of spicy heat. The real winner in this jerky is that Adobo marinade of vinegar and garlic that really livens up the senses.

I even found myself digging constantly into the bag to get more chew, which for me indicates a great deal of snackability. My only rap on this jerky is the significant volume of stringiness, creating these unchewable wads of tissue.

As for the name "Astig" translating to "badass" in Filipino, it certainly is considering the high-powered flavor this jerky packs.

1 comment:

Thank you for the review. Your feedback is important to us so that we may continue to improve our product to be the very best it can be. We are also looking forward to your review of our Spicy Tocino flavor.

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About Best Beef Jerky

I'm Steve Johnson, and I've been in the Internet marketing and publishing business since 1997. I've been a life-long fan of beef jerky and decided to merge my profession with my snack food of choice, and gave birth to Best Beef Jerky.

I review beef jerky, turkey jerky, bison jerky, pretty much any meat jerky, even vegan jerky. I review meat sticks, biltong, cecina, carne seca, it's all fair game as long as it's meat, it's dried, and it's a snack.